Thursday, February 18, 2010

There will be Zazen this Saturday at Hill Street Center and it will be part of Month Long Zen and Sex Month. But it is also our monthly day-long zazen, which goes from 10 am till about 3:30 pm. So please keep that in mind if you choose to come. You don't have to stay all day. But we're staying all day.

If you don't wanna do an all-day Zen but wanna do some Zen anyway this weekend, I'll be hosting things at Against The Stream (aka Dharma Punx) in Hollywood on Sunday beginning at 11 am. The address is 4300 Melrose (btw Heliotrope and Vermont) Los Angeles, CA 90029.

The tattoo shown on today's blog entry comes from James in Kentucky. Cool, huh? As I said the last time someone got this tattooed on their body, Gene Simmons always brags that KISS fans get KISS tattoos making them members of the KISS ARMY for life. Well, IN YOUR FACE, GENE SIMMONS!!!

I got a very interesting question the other day from a friend who is not a Zen practitioner but who is very concerned about matters of race, gender and social privilege. She asked, "Have you ever considered that it may be easier for you to give up attachment to identity because your identities are not problematic, are in fact usually not considered identities at all? I honestly do want to know what your thoughts are about your position in the world, so please tell me."

I don't think I can do justice to this question today while I'm scrambling around packing and stuff. But it's an interesting one to ponder.

I do not think that attachment to identity is something that can be quantified. I don't think it's something some people have more of than others, at least at the outset of practice. Except perhaps in some very rare and extraordinary cases.

For myself, even though I'm a white heterosexual male I've lived probably a third of my life in societies where I was a minority. In Kenya, where I lived as a child, and in Japan, where I spent 11 years of my adult life, being a white person did not mean you were automatically of high social status the way it does in Europe and America. Quite the opposite. And I was also part of the punk scene in which being "alternative" in some way was far cooler than being a plain old white hetero male.

Which doesn't mean I understand every thing that people who live their entire lives as part of a truly put-upon social group have to deal with. After all, I did choose to go to Japan (though not to Kenya) and had the option to leave pretty much whenever I wanted to. But perhaps I do understand more than most American white hetero males. I know what it's like to be refused housing because of my race, or to be followed around in stores because "my kind" is known to steal things, to be able to scare little old ladies just by being who I am, to go for long stretches without seeing people of my own culture, to have every little thing I do be attributed to my race, to not be able to buy the kinds of food I like in the stores and so on and on.

I guess the question is; do things like this cause one to need to hold on tighter to matters of identity? Does one's identity as not a part of the ruling class become something which one must cling to and which is therefore harder to drop when one enters into Buddhist practice?

Since I've lived both as part of the ruling class and not part of the ruling class I guess I ought to be able to say. But I don't think I can, at least not definitively.

I believe that all of us, no matter what our race, sexual orientation, gender, etc., are socialized to cling tightly to individual identity and to believe in it very strongly. This goes far beyond matters of race, sexual orientation, gender, etc. Those aspects of identity are very superficial compared to the much deeper issues of seeing oneself as separate from the rest of humanity and from the Universe itself. So my guess is that maybe someone who has forged a strong identity based on his/her/zher race, culture, sexual orientation etc. might have a tiny fraction of a percent more attachment to identity than someone for whom the questioner says identity is not an issue. Maybe. Maybe. Just a teeeny, weeny, itty bitty bit.

But in terms of what we're dealing with in Buddhist practice this would hardly make any difference at all. In those terms, even for members of the ruling class, identity is a HUGE issue. Perhaps it's even worse for members of the ruling class because they've never seen their identity as an identity, having been able to take so much for granted. I'd say a person who has grown up having to understand their identity as identity actually has a small head start on what Buddhism is dealing with in these areas.

That's just my very quick answer on a Thursday morning with lots and lots and lots to do that prevents me from examining this as carefully as it deserves.

Perhaps in future installments I'll make a stab at doing this question real justice.

50 comments:

I once had a discussion with a Japanese student here, and told him he had to learn to speak French so well that no one would believe he was not French. He replied, "But I don't want to no longer be Japanese!" And I said, "Believe me, when you're so "French" that no one will guess you're Japanese will be when you'll feel most Japanese."

I know because almost 30 years in Southern France has made me more than ever aware of my Quebec culture. At the same time, the Quebec I knew no longer exists, so that, when I visit there, I am much more of an absolute stranger. Whatever I'll do to exaggerate my Quebec accent, people will mistake me for French because of my vocabulary and ways and manners.

Yet that Quebecois rearing resurfaces all the time in a very stiff French society, and makes social life no easy matter.

Being an alien in a foreign land is generally a good blow to the notion of identity, conceived as a belonging to a larger community. Some find it too hard to live up to.

It's just like when I go to the bathroom to shave and I feel like asking, "Who's that old man in the mirror?" Because my self identity was forged in my teens, and I keep figuring myself out as that 17 yo that I left behind so long ago.

Identity is precisely that false need that motivates most suffering in the world, that is clear for me. It's not that identity is idiotic or perverse or whatever. It's that it's just a tool for classification, and "the way is easy, just don't pick and choose"...

This is a topic that has come up before at the Queer Dharma meet-ups at the San Francisco Zen Center - members will periodically ask if being there in and of itself necessitates a need to become less attached to one's sexuality and the community that it makes one a part of. This gets circular quickly, as the next point is typically that heterosexuals at SFZC are likely just as attached to their heterosexuality and what it means to their identity, but like the Quebecoi who never left Quebec, the invisibility of that part of their identity never leads them to question it.

Who holds onto their identity more tightly is probably, as I think you're saying, Brad, more about an individual than any blanket statement about in or out groups can make.... I think at Queer Dharma (just a lay member, folks, so just my view) the consensus is that we have our individual blessing/burden to sit with whatever we realize we're clinging to, may or may not involve sexual orientation, and only our own responsibility as to whether we're being honest and genuine in our practice.

Isn't identity just another attachment? In this sense, is it not more a case of pride in one's identity? It can be noble pride, the pride of the disadvantaged, of the loner, of the stranger in a strange land, of the hard done by.

Is it not less a matter of one being more hard than the other to shake loose, and more a matter of ALL of it is hard to shake loose -- it's all just still ego.

The way I understand it, race and gender are not cut-and-dried categories. I understand both to be broad generalizations. In reality, aren’t we all at different points on a spectrum? Some people are more black than others. Some are more bisexual than others. Everyone is unique. To me, understanding one’s “identity” is understanding one’s uniqueness… one’s reality in this moment. Race, gender and so on are likely more important to people who are discriminated because of it. And maybe that sort of thing causes attachment. But we humans seem to find endless opportunities for attachment.

Somewhat related: I am currently reading Gabor Mate’s book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”. It investigates the role of early development (in-utero and early years) in the development of addictions (drug, food, sex, etc.). The book builds a very good argument for treating drug addicts through harm reduction, rather than incarceration. Mate is a doctor working with addicts in Vancouver’s lower eastside. But the book is about a lot more than addiction. It gives a lot of insight into human behaviour. Highly recommended book. http://www.straight.com/article-132920/we-re-wired-for-addiction

Members of minorities have an advantage when it comes to seeing things as they are. The hardest illusion to overcome is the illusion that you can't see, the illusion that you are blind to. Members of a minority are constantly made aware that their way of looking at things is different. Thus they are aware not only their own viewpoint, but also of the viewpoint of the majority, and are more likely to see the relativity of both. So they are in a better position to see the truth than a member of the majority, who is more likely to take their relative point of view as an unquestioned truth.

This effect is strong enough that Buddhist texts such as "The 37 Activities of a Bodhisattva" advise practitioners to leave home and practice in a foreign land. Remember how Hui Neng was from South China, traveled to a monastery in North China, was discriminated against, and accused of not having buddha nature.

I'm not a well-practiced Zen Buddhist but does this sound reasonable?: Our identities are a collection of concrete actions. We take actions identified with African-American culture, femininity, homosexuality, heterosexuality, etc. Everything in the end comes down to concrete actions in the real world just the same as "goodness" or "badness." It's when we essentialize our actions and make them part of an abstract "identity" that we cling to a false notion of self. In the end, even if we consistently fall in love with members of the same sex, we are not "homosexuals" but rather collections of homosexual impulses and actions- and this, of course, is the same for heterosexuality and anything else you might think of. At best, we have certain biological predispositions but even then we're far from the realm of "ego" and "selfhood" and the like.

Who is the "ruling class" you refer to, Brad? Do you mean the extraordinarily small percent of people who control all the wealth on the planet, or simply the ethnic majority of a particular culture? Whatever dominant traits the majority adhere to will determine how they view the few outside the norm. Being true to yourself, I feel, means that identity is someone else's problem.

Blogger proulx michel said..."Being an alien in a foreign land is generally a good blow to the notion of identity..."

25 years ago, I was responsible for "curriculum development." That meant that every time there was a class, or seminar, in Japan, I had to select someone from the east coast AND the west coast of the USA to attend. I always enjoyed seeing my fellow Americans thrust into the smallest of minorities - the gaijin - and then watch them try to tread water.

The secret is, of course:

You are what you are And not what you think

To a blind horse a smileIs as good as a wink.

It's really not what you are, it's what you do that people build an image upon.

In my own office, I had a 600+ year old sheet of rice paper framed with the caligraphy "mondaiji" written on it. There was no question who I was - no pretenses regardless of the supposed status of the guest.

I am a white male and I was brought up in England, in the sprawling, amorphous conurbation of the West Midlands, a multicultural, industrial metropolitan area created from parts of other more traditional counties. My address was Tividale, Warley, Sandwell, West Midlands, but there was no discernable boundary or centre to these labels. When I moved to various places in the country it struck me how others had a much stronger sense of place and identity -- northerners v southerners, proud or one-eyed Yorkshire folk or Liverpudlians etc, or just people who regarded their village or locale with a sense or its distinctive features and history. At the melting pot of univeristy I found myself in a kind of excluded middle while others reinforced and tested their identities against one another.

As teenager in the early nineties, I moved to a Wolverhampton school where ethic minorities were larger in number than the white population, and was stuck at how the tensions at school revolved more around differing south Asian identities and religious affiliations, while often finding myself excluded like a minority and labelled as some typical Anglo Saxon christian (that's when it occured to me that I might be 'Anglo-saxon' and a christian while not going to church or believing I was) or cut out of conversations slipping into a different languages etc.

My parents were of a generation from a working class background who went to grammar school and then Univeristy. My confused father thought of himself as middle class while we lived in a poor area, with high unemployment, and were poor ourselves. Thus with class identity there seemed to be no clear distinction, no real sense of a label that I could adopt.

In terms of gender, I had the (seemingly at first) unfortunate and painful experience of being brought up by a man who asserted his masculinity by pointing out that I wasn't a man whenever he was feeling insecure and unhappy I imagine, or fearful at signs of his son's burgeoning maleness. After he left, my teens were experiencing another asserter of his male authority while requiring constant mothering and coddling. So again, from a young age, I found myself self-consciously trying to define my place as a male, what with the obvious and inescapable traits, but always seeming to fail -- it seemed like a club with many clubs I should but didn't want to belong to, while oddly, already being a member.

I remember, just before leaving Wolverhampton, before returning to university, stopping in the town centre and looking around me: this was 'home' I remember feeling. An adopted home, where I became acutely aware that I was standing amidst hundreds of people and they were men, women, christians, seikhs, muslims, hindus right wing, left wing, black, white, brown, British, European, English, Chinese, vegetarian, football fans from at least three clubs -- etc, etc. I remember thinking, how wonderful it was, all these people, just getting on with their business, while the famous local nutcase was angrily bawling at what he considered to be the naughty kids he had to police every saturday, with his toy gun waving, and dressed in full rodeo cowboy garb.

I was quite contented for the first time to be non-of-the-above, but somehow part of this big, all inclusive club I called home, Woverhampton, England. I realised that this point of view was because I was a kind of nothing and that that had something to do with my experience of being a kind of weird minority: An English white man, who didn't feel, and didn't feel it very strongly, that I was particularly 'White', or a 'man' or English -- that just arose when I interacted with others.

Later in life discovering Zen was like discovering the obvious.

In my experience, so called 'minorities' have often been disadvantaged, by their assumption that they 'see' it the way it is, drawing too one-sidely from their own paticular experience of exclusion and the political viewpoints they adopt to support that.

I remember a programme on TV where an articulate, 'black' man born in England, discovered, by 'pursuing his roots', that his great great etc grandfather, was a white slave-trader.

I remember being lambasted at Uni, by two lesbians, one afro-carribean, one half-chinese, for being a typical, 'white, male, straight-laced chauvinist', for chatting to my french friend about how different nations' footballing styles could be related to their generalised national characteristics. It didn't take much to point out that their attitude towards me was not only racist, sexist and heterophobic-- using their own terms-- but that their point of view came from their entrenched and arrogant assumptions that the minority identities they intersected with, had lead them to behave more like their idealised nemesis.

I told them how I'd explored homosexuality, not because I had any strong gay impulses, but hey, as everything else was not what it seemed, I thought I have a go to see, when it was on offer. I told them the story of how afterwards I had a nice chat to this black gay guy about William Blake, and then how his friend gets really angry when people are racist to her, and that he's really concerned at how its eating her up all that anger, despite her being right.

They were very friendly to me afterwards, folk chatting to folk, once the bullshit driven by whatever anger bubble had popped.

I find in England, so many white folk acutely aware of how to define their Englishness and what it means and how to relate to others, even when many return to very simple and crude views. I find many minorities very certain about their view points and secure and articulate in their analysis, with very fixed labels -- often second hand cultural theory models and labels -- who often only play at looking at what is really going on, while their viewpoints talk for them, driven by whatever personal suffering.

I might be wrong but it seems to me that western Zen is driven by a white, educated majority for a very good reason, and its blind side often being where it matches up Zen with its liberalisms too easily.

So my guess is that maybe someone who has forged a strong identity based on his/her/zher race, culture, sexual orientation etc. might have a tiny fraction of a percent more attachment to identity than someone for whom the questioner says identity is not an issue. Maybe. Maybe. Just a teeeny, weeny, itty bittybit.

Anon #108, repeating Brad's quote missed the mark. I think the above bio was more about how we use attachment to identity to give vent to or express deeper issues, not about whether one some have more or less of an attachment, and that not having a firm identity can be advantageous in realising those deeper issues.

If I've missed the mark, then maybe you should say what you mean in your own words. Irony can be a bit rude when someone has been open and honest. Conceited.

My apologies, anon. I wasn't commenting on the previous contribution (yours?), which I found very interesting and insightful. I was seeking to make a general comment about the grip that notions of/the reality of, identitification of one sort or another have - a comment unrelated to anon @ 5.02/03 am's piece.

But still...conceited? Yes, I think so, often. I'm not sure I can do too much about it.

That's the problem with irony. It assumes we're all going to get it. That assumption can be quite insular and thus conceited.

Of course you can do something about being conceited. 1. notice you are. 2. Take advantage of people pointing out you have behave in that way. 3. Don't do it next time, when you feel the urge. 4. Notice whether or not hidden zen cliches are being adopted in the service of maintaining that habit or tendency - for example, the accepting that I am already myself idea and 'I' can't do anything about that.

Irony depends on a group sharing the same social codes in order for those to get it to get it. Therefore it will naturally exclude those who don't share those social codes it assumes. That is why it CAN be a problem, CAN be a way of communicating that is insular and conceited.

You might want to be inclusive, but that doesn't mean you are being as inclusive as you thought, because with irony you are being inclusive only to those who are potentially already included by being able to interpret those social codes. I joke for Americans might not seem funny Brits.

Language has that pitfall.

Moreover, as is obvious, not all your addressees got it or fully got it. Hwich is why you've had to explain not just the joke but the nature of it.

In order to successfully use irony, you have to make sure you have given enough cues to alert the reader to a) that you are being ironic and b)what sort of point or joke you are making.

Irony is a common method of exclusion: a way of talking in code. Think of Niles Crane in Frasier and how he would make a sarcastic point about someone in the same room: this would be funny because he could simultaneously be making a satirical point about that someone that might be true, while at the same time revealing the extent of his conceited, intellectual snobbery and vanity through his use of irony. The cleverness of the writing here was in the way the audience would be included in the social codes Nile would use, and feel similarly clever and get it, thus laughing with Niles, while at the same time laughing as a group AT Niles, with the writer, so to speak, who was excluded from the DRAMATIC irony that made fun of his snobbery.

And I think it is clear that I was being much more patronising than ironic when I gave clear direct points when disagreeing with your assertion that you maybe couldn't do anything about being conceited. The implication was that I didn't think you were being honest. Also that I did 'know better' as you put it, because if we avoid sophistry and defensiveness, conceited behaviour can of course be avoided if you have already admitted that you have that tendency. Just don't do it again, unless you want to. Metaphysical ponderings about the nature of stupidy or anything else are irrelevant when you know there's something you can choose not to do if you don't want the flak.

Just don't do it again, unless you want to...your assertion that you maybe couldn't do anything about being conceited...I didn't think you were being honest.

The suggestions you make to avoid 'mistakes' represent the kind of internal conversation I sometimes hear (but not as often as I used to). Yet still, we are what we are. So we make an effort...and then we do what we do.

Hi anon above. I think if you re-read, you'll understand a bit better that I was not responding to his apology for the initial mis-understanding, but to his subsequent assertions.

And it's not a pot/kettle situation, because I didn't claim there was anything wrong with self-justification, I disagreed with his view on being ironic, and with his statement that he couldn't do anything about being conceited with I thought disingenuous.

Your mistake.

And let's cut out the crap: I, like anyone else can and will justify why and what I have written or my point of view. I will disagree if I wish with someone's responses. And If I think I know better, then why not say so.

hey aren't you also 'knowing better' and making your point. I'm pointing out that it's your mistake -- you just probably skimmed through the dialogue...

"The suggestions you make to avoid 'mistakes' represent the kind of internal conversation I sometimes hear (but not as often as I used to). Yet still, we are what we are. So we make an effort...and then we do what we do."

I don't think I gave advice on how to avoid 'mistakes'. I was pointing out that if you already know you have a trait, tendency or behaviour, then you can choose to avoid doing it again or choose not to. In other words I was pointing in that case to something that wasn't what I'd call a mistake, but rather a choice of how to behave. I think though that there have been many mis-readings.

I defer to Dogens essay Do Not Do Anything Evil for interesting insights on the matter.

To tie identity and irony together: How did Brit Hume turn his Buddhism-bashing comments into a "poor Christian being bashed" scenario? Iron and Wine put it well: "There ain't a penthouse Christian wants the pain of the scab, but they all want the scar." Irony and whining indeed.

To anon who's been chatting to me and who said: "...if you already know you have a trait, tendency or behaviour, then you can choose to avoid doing it again or choose not to....I defer to Dogens essay Do Not Do Anything Evil for interesting insights on the matter."

I guess you mean the chapter called “Shoaku-makusa”...You might be interested to read this article from which this is an excerpt:

Even though many kinds of right are included in the concept of rightness, there has never been any kind of right that is realized beforehand and that then waits for someone to do it.” He [Dogen] means that right as a concept is completely different from right action. Right as a concept is only a thought, only an idea. And even if we have the clearest and most perfect set of ideas about right and wrong, we still have to figure out how to ensure that we act right. The concept of right and acting right are completely different problems.

So my guess is that maybe someone who has forged a strong identity based on his/her/zher race, culture, sexual orientation etc. might have a tiny fraction of a percent more attachment to identity than someone for whom the questioner says identity is not an issue. Maybe. Maybe. Just a teeeny, weeny, itty bitty bit.

And you linked the bitty bits to long wiki articles about all the ways that we human being are connected by race, culture, sex, age and stuff...like we can't escape it? But at the same time they're just kinda ideas really? Is that right?

...And you linked the bitty bits to long wiki articles about all the ways that we human being are connected...like we can't escape it? But at the same time they're just kinda ideas really? Is that right?